[Remorse]: If you feel bad
I’m not even sure I feel bad about this. I feel confused and I feel like it makes me a bad person, but I don’t really doubt my perspective. I sometimes wonder if I have just had some very bad luck with elderly people or if the problem is on my end. I know I struggle with some of the same physical issues as old people and I feel angry sometimes that they are unable to accommodate me—ever—without making a huge issue of it and saying all the worst possible things you can say to someone with my disabilities. I seem to inevitably run out of patience, part of the problem being that mine is a bit more finite than the average person for reasons that are somewhat out of my control.
I also feel somewhat isolated in my perceptions because so many other people are able to love unconditionally and see this as a virtue. I was never loved unconditionally as a child and I really don’t have that ability. If someone is unable to listen to me at all, cannot accommodate my needs at all, and responds to things I do and say aggressively and critically without even knowing what they are talking about, then I can’t help asking myself this question: Why am I bending over backwards to respect someone who obstinately refuses to respect me back?
I think I have a decent amount of empathy for some of the issues that elderly people struggle with and the diverse personalities, insights, and stories they have to offer, which is why I try to be a listener, let the small things go over my head, and simply offer my time and attention when I can. With the people I am thinking about, and there are three of them, most interactions are so frustrating and exhausting for me that I run out of gas pretty quickly and get to the point where it is physically hard for me to interact. When I try to excuse myself to regroup or if I ask for an accommodation, they push back or say things that are passive-aggressive or condescending. I feel like part of the issue with two of them is that they want to have their cake and eat it too, because they have physical problems they are not addressing and this hampers communication. They are both in total denial about how this hampers communication, how much they misunderstand, and how much work other people have to do in order to get information across to them or even communicate in their presence. They won’t lift a finger to correct the problem or even get the issue tested, but if you offer the slightest critique of their obstructive behavior, you are met with sad puppy face and, ‘We’re just old.” (So feel sorry for us and don’t expect us to be responsible to other people).
One of the people I am thinking about is absolutely malignant. In the same year that I was treated for cancer, we visited her in the break between my 8 rounds of chemo and my 30 days of radiation. We had just come from spending a few days at a fairly nice resort that was by no means, like, the Four Seasons or anything and that was in fact a timeshare, so we had to fend off pitches. Heh, the pool was nice, though. What this person said to me on that trip, sitting right at her dining room table, was, “You are supposed to wait until your kids finish school and move away to do things like that.” I think of that as the moment she showed me her demon face. Cannot unsee. She is the kind of “nice” person who is so happy to see you, welcomes you to her house, and then panics when you want to put a piece of a candy bar in her refrigerator because there is no room. She is now going through trauma and lashing out at everyone around her, and yet I can’t really say anything, because unconditional love. Bleh. I am sick to death of the lack of boundaries and inability to take no for an answer. I am sick to death of people who choose to live their lives in fear and then try to impose their fears on me. I am sick to death of the guilt memes on social media, especially the ones that say something like, “I’ll bet most of you wont share this.” Fucking right I won’t. I am tired of being told I am wrong about things when the real problem is that someone is making giant assumptions out of hand, remembering incorrectly because denial, or just can’t fucking listen. I am tired of people who pretend they care about me and obviously have no interest in me as a person whatsoever, zip, zilch, zero, to the point where they cannot retain the slightest bit of information about me or pay attention to what I am saying. I am tired of hearing variations on, “You had better appreciate your ******* when they are alive because they will be gone someday,” when I feel appreciated by these individuals only when I submerge all of my needs and personality, and also because I find it aggressive and awful. Same with statements like, “Tell (my daughter) she’ll see how it is when she has kids. I did it to my mother and you did it to me and someday it will happen to her.”
When I said, once, in a discussion regarding my concerns about my daughter’s binge-eating (referring back to something this person actually said to me as a child), “At least I’ve never told her, “But you have such a pretty face,” this person contemplatively declared, “I always thought you made things a lot worse for yourself by how you dressed and everything.” NO, NO, YOUR LINE IS SUPPOSED TO BE, “YOU WERE ALWAYS BEAUTIFUL TO ME.” Never heard it, never will, so I just don’t know where this eternal well of unconditional love and acceptance in me is supposed to come from.
I know that by posting this I will (hopefully) get a range of replies. I don’t expect everyone to agree with me. It could very well be the case that my views are distorted because of a very small number of people that I have the misfortune to deal with. I have somewhat of an open mind and am always struggling to do the right thing, whatever that is, but I am really tired and fed up right now. And yet I still feel guilty sometimes. Whyyyyy?
Submitted September 30, 2015 at 01:12AM by womanfromanotherplac http://ift.tt/1O6gWjm confession
No comments:
Post a Comment